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How Children View Your Program
September 15, 2008
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
-Mark Twain
-Mark Twain
"In the business world, companies typically assess their performance by checking the opinions of their customers. Likewise, child care centers frequently survey parents as one means of gauging their performance. This feedback is always useful. If a large number of parents have concerns about your program, you absolutely need to know about this so you can take action.
"On the other hand, if your parents express general satisfaction, this does not necessarily mean it is time to break out the champagne and celebrate your success. The national study, Cost and Quality and Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers, found that parents are not very accurate evaluators of quality in centers. Parents in the study consistently overrated the quality of care their children were receiving.
"A seldom explored alternative might be to survey children in the center. They often spend more time in your center than you do, so certainly their attitudes about the place should carry some weight.
"Of course, surveying children as consumers of your services requires some creative questioning. Asking four year olds to rate the quality of your center on a scale of 1 to 10 would not yield particularly helpful results. On the other hand, it may be useful to ask them what they most like to do at the center, what they like most about their teachers, and what they don't like doing. Such questions have the potential of yielding patterns of responses that are instructive about children's experiences."
This week our popular resource, The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations is on sale. The comprehensive guide includes contributions from the leading experts in the field on the following management areas...
- Leadership
- Advocacy
- Getting organized
- Legal issues
- Financial management
- Fundraising
- Personnel policies
- Recruiting and selecting staff
- Supervising and developing staff
- Evaluating your program
- Shaping your curriculum
- Working with parents
- Marketing your program
- Community outreach
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 Commentsphiladelphia, pa, United States
I am a child care director who is deeply saddened and on my way to being dissillousioned regarding child care in America.
There are too many centers that do not have the best intrest of the children in mind. But how will anyone know this if no one bothers to look.
We have no problem sending in mystery shoppers into stores and restaurants to survey how well the service is. How come we don't sent in mystery "parents" to veiw how well a center treats the children in their charge.
I have visited far too many centers where the main focus is on how many stars "Keystone Stars" a center has rather than focusing in on how developmentally appropriate a center is.
I have witnessed unqualified teacher who apply developmentally inappropriate activities everyday and I walk away shaking my head.
I know of a center who has reached it's maximum star level -which means it can apply for and recieve funds in abundance- but are constantly telling the children to shut-up and sit still.
University at Buffalo Child Care Center
buffalo, ny, United States
While I wheel through the halls of our Child Care Center, I hear a lot of laughter, & conversation among the children and teachers. Of course, there are the babies who cry when they need to be fed, or need a diaper change, but all in all, I get a warm feeling that the faculty is doing good work. The children do talk to me about their experiences in the Center on a day to day basis. So I get first hand feedback.
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